Spoilers! for Journey's End- and if you need to avoid them, really, just go to youtube and watch the episode! which, really, i thought was fabulous. It had everything, all at once- happy and tragic both every other moment.
the story: at the rate i'm going, this is bound to be a series of Doctor Who post-Journey's End one-shots. i'm on vacation and so mostly paper-and-penciling it, but was so blown away-inspired by the finale I had to write this. (my first Who!fic, so reader beware.)
When Mickey's making his good-bye to Jackie and the Doctor to Jack and Martha, and Donna's on the phone, we get a quick glimpse of Rose and blue-suit Ten talking alone, and seemingly very happily. Hadn't seen anyone start there yet, and it's been niggling at me, so- here you go.
"Hello."
It was the Doctor's voice. Rose stopped running her hand lightly over the TARDIS' controls and looked over her shoulder, already smiling. Her smile stilled as she turned. It was the Doctor's grin too, and his wave, fingers twiddling on the Doctor's hand. But it was the other man looking at her, the new new new Doctor in his blue suit.
"Rose Tyler," he added, rocking back on his heels a bit. Her name rolled off his lips a touch more crisply, maybe an extra trill to the Rs as well. She couldn't help but stare at his waving hand, and he couldn't help but notice with one swift glance between her gaze and the hand it was locked on. His fingers stopped twiddling and he lowered his right hand slowly, his tongue poking out his cheek as he waited for her to say something.
The hand he'd lost on Christmas, so long ago now and still yesterday, too. The hand this Doctor had somehow sprouted from. Or sprouted from Donna- Rose knew she'd come a long way from her shopgirl days but that didn't mean she had a handle on the particularities of instantaneous cross-species biological meta-crisis.
Rose steeled herself and met his eyes. "Hello," she said, trying to match his initial cheer and covering her confusion with curiosity. "Doctor?"
"Oh yes," he said, bobbing his head and giving her that impossibly infectious grin.
Her Doctor was making good-byes outside. Rose glanced behind her at the closed wood doors, then tilted her head and squinted at the Doctor saying hello as if he was burning too bright. "So, you're something like a clone, yeah?"
"Me? A clone?" he said, aghast. "A clone? Nahh. Not anymore than I'm- say- a Slitheen." He waited to see her reaction, then winked. "Remember that, yeah?"
It'd been years since he'd winked at her. She'd missed that wink. She'd been waiting for it, the wink that let her know everything was all right, and she felt vaguely cheated for a moment to have gotten it from this Doctor, who she couldn't help but think of as Donna's, instead of hers outside. Her heart jumped anyways. Whoever's this Doctor was, the wink was for her. "'Course I remember," said Rose, bemused and drifting closer despite herself. "Sort of surprised you do."
"Oh but I remember everything," he said, tapping a finger against his head. "Bit like last time. But with two old heads instead of one new one. And a body for each, which I rather think is a stroke of good luck."
Rose decidedly agreed. "Suit for each too," she said, nodding at his outfit. "Blue's new."
"Newer, actually," he said. "This suit's had a little wear and tear- more than this body, frankly. Wore blue a lot, after- well, with Martha- d'you like Martha?- quite a girl, that Martha Jones," he said, and Rose, who really rather had liked Martha, detested her for a second just from the way he lifted his eyebrows, wrong Doctor or not. "Her and me and this suit, we got around quite a bit. The usual, y'know, saving hospitals, New York City, spaceship crews, Shakespeare - no, wait, Shakespeare was that suit- ooh, you'd like Shakespeare, though, Rose. Genius. But bad breath. Still, name like yours, bet he'd write you a sonnet too. And I got old for a bit... I don't look good old," he said, halting suddenly and with a peculiar expression on his face, one that Rose found she couldn't read. "But that- " he waved his hand dismissively, as if to say it was unimportant, "that was in the other suit too. Blue's only slightly used- plenty of run left in it. So-" He took a breath and looked down at her, lowering his voice. "What do you think?"She rested her tongue against the back of her teeth, fighting a grin as she studied him. "About the suit?" she said, and this Doctor, seeming almost winded, nodded as she looked him up and down. "It'll do," she said critically, and then her smile got loose and escaped towards her ears. "Matches the TARDIS!"
"Doesn't it just," he said, looking pleased and reaching with both hands as if to tug on something at his neck. He frowned a little at finding nothing. "Could use a tie. But you!" he said, looking her over and beaming proudly. "You, Rose Tyler- you're still fantastic."
She paused a moment, almost caught her breath. "Not brilliant?"
"Also brilliant," he said, without hesitation. "Absolutely brilliant. Smashingly brilliant, fantastically brilliant- ooh," he said, very brown eyes lighting. "I like that. Quite like that. Two in one. Though- bit mouthy?"
"Meh," she said, shrugging, and met his dancing eyes and they both broke out laughing. He tilted his head back and she bent forward, hair falling into her face and it was old times again. Everything seemed funny no matter how simple because here they were, all alright, and Earth safe again for today and Rose was back on the TARDIS. And it really was unbearably laughable in itself having two- let alone essentially three- Doctors run about to begin with. Rose thought then about the Doctor outside, in his brown pinstriped suit exactly like it had when he'd burned a sun to say good-bye to her at Bad Wolf Bay and found herself feeling uncomfortable. Her laugh trailed off and she straightened her shoulders, still smiling.
"You're still you, too," she said, marveling.
"Still me."
She gestured behind her with her thumb. "But he's you."
"That he is," said this Doctor, his smile drying up.
"So- I mean, really," said Rose, looking up at him. "I'm talking to a hand."
Slowly he slid both hands out of his pockets again, then turned them palm up and down quickly. "Well," he said, clearing his throat. "I have two now, so there's a bit more to me than one hand. And I suppose you can talk to hands, but unless you're on the planet Fragelein, the conversation's pretty one-sided. There's more to a man than where he comes from, but you have to agree it's an awfully nice hand. A good hand, at least on its best behavior. You held this hand first- well, second, but that's nitpicking- not that you nitpick, Rose- but one reliable right hand, that's not a bad start for a man," he said, and that peculiar look flickered across his face again, as if he'd tasted something disgusting. "Or Time Lord. What-have-you."
"Not so sure about reliable," said Rose, face straight. "It did get chopped off rather quick."
"Oi, that wasn't the hand's fault," he said. "Could've been a worse start- could've been a left." His eyebrows quirked.
"Yeah, that might've been sinister," said Rose, and when he crinkled his nose at her she crinkled hers back. "And Donna," Rose continued, inclining her head towards the far side where Donna seemed to be trying to end her conversation with her mother on the mobile, "she- started you too?"
"'Fraid so," he said, pulling a face across the TARDIS at Donna Noble. Donna, with 904 years of accumulated Time Lord knowledge bubbling in her brain and representing all the intuitive brilliance of human women, stuck her tongue out at him. The Doctor eyed her appraisingly. "Be sure to slap me, if I'm any ruder. It's her fault."
"Ruder and not ginger," said Rose, the words waltzing off her tongue to a pleasantly familiar tune.
He looked at her sidelong, with a closed-mouth smile this time. "You'd think, of all the qualities I could have acquired from Donna Noble, I'd have at least picked up a hint of ginger," he said, sounding discouraged enough that Rose found herself taking a step closer to peer almost playfully at the side of his face. She pointed.
"You've sort of a dash of ginger there, in the left sideburn."
"Really?" he said, tickled, running a hand up from his chin as if he could feel the color. "I could grow a beard, see how it turns out-"
Rose didn't know Time Lords could grow beards, much less would want to, but the picture popping up in her mind of the Doctor was, for once, less than pretty. "No," she said, quickly. "Don't do that." She wondered, suddenly, if this Doctor would be around for her to see try to grow a beard or to see if he was ruder. She couldn't exactly imagine two of him functionally sharing the TARDIS.
Her expression must have changed, because his smile waned as he looked down at her. "What?" he asked.
"You're not going to- collapse back into a hand, are you?" she asked tentatively.
"No," he said immediately, adjusting his suit jacket and opening his mouth again.
"It's not that I want you to," Rose said, before he could ask. "Just checking."
"No- well- I can see how that might make- matters, well, simpler. Two- let alone sort of three- of me, there's bound to be complications-"
"Speak for yourself, spaceman," said Donna from over Rose's shoulder, shutting her phone with a firm click. She was still beaming, it was even in her voice. "For once everything's looking decidedly uncomplicated from my end."
Rose noticed that even as the Doctor- this Doctor, Donna's doctor, she reminded herself- grinned, there was something somber rising in his eyes. She wondered if Donna could recognize that, yet, and opened her mouth to ask what was wrong.
"Rose," called Mickey, and she looked over to see him with a hand on the door, giving her a nod. He really had meant it about leaving, then, with that kiss good-bye. She glanced once at the Doctor she'd been talking to, but he seemed embroiled in chatting with Donna now- thick as thieves came to mind with a pang, like her and him used to be (and would be again, she insisted to herself, her Doctor'd be back in any minute). She strode towards Mickey, another pang settling in her chest as she threw her arms around him. Rose was so sick of good-byes.
"The Doctor'll see you right," said Mickey, and for a moment, she absently wondered which one he was thinking of. "You know him. And you know where to find me, if he doesn't. Don't forget me, yeah?"
"Never," said Rose. "And Mickey, please. Take care." She pecked his lips, like she had for their very first kiss when she was fourteen.
He winked at her, too, and it didn't thrill her the way the Doctor's did but it made her smile, really smile, and that was the last look Mickey Smith had of her because he slipped out the doors without looking back once.
Rose didn't tear up, but she turned to her mother, noticing the Doctor in his blue suit watching her as she did though he was still talking with Donna.
"The Doctor'll take us home next, I suppose, sweetheart?" said her mother, adding rather forlornly, "Minus Mickey."
She loved her mother so much, but the Doctor was Rose's home. "Dunno," she said honestly, waiting for the TARDIS doors to swing open and her Doctor, in the brown suit she remembered, to bound back inside. Whichever version of him or however many there were, Mickey was right, she knew the Doctor. It would work out, and somehow, certainly after all this time, Rose was sure.
She'd stay with her Doctor.
It seemed only right.
Please leave a review- it's the only payment fanficcers ever get, and stories like these, where the characters all belong to the BBC and I'm only harmlessly borrowing, are just for my own enjoyment and, I hope, yours. Feedback of any kind, though helpful's the preferred brand, is vastly appreciated. :D